The Healthcare Ecosystem - A Challenging Enviroment for Integration The Healthcare industry is made up of a very diverse mix of systems – both legacy and new. Organizations have had to con- tend with a multitude of operating systems, databases, data formats and communication protocols that have accumulated within the healthcare ecosystem over the years. Much of the integration within healthcare involves data produced or consumed by EHR systems. From cloud solutions with modern APIs, to traditional HL7-based systems, to more closed custom systems, there are hundreds of EHRs active today, each posing their own challenges. Legacy and New Systems Have to Coexist In most cases, upgrading or replacing legacy systems to support new standards or technology simply isn’t cost effective or feasible. The reality is that organizations must be able to work around these constraints, supporting both the old and the new. Middleware that sits alongside these systems allows you to develop, innovate, and connect on the technology that is cur- rently in place. Middleware is what facilitates making these disparate, non-interoperable systems interoperable. Middleware Connects Non-Interoperable Systems The PilotFish eiPlatform integration engine is that middleware. It enables an organization to “loosely couple” all of it’s systems, connecting offerings from various vendors and of different ages and technologies. The result is flexibility and adaptability that is impossible to achieve by hard-coding integrations directly into each application. PilotFish eiPlatform - Connect Anything With Anything PilotFish middleware is being leveraged throughout the health- care ecosystem – by payers, providers, equipment vendors, cloud services, exchanges and other entities who need to deliver “interop-capable” solutions. Using a simple, graphical interface “assembly line”, implementers connect anything to anything – including legacy and new technology that may have been developed using different data models, designs or archi- tecture. The eiPlatform is compatible with all major databases, operating systems, data formats and communication protocols. Additional benefits to be realized include: • Dramatically lowering the total number of interfaces required between internal and external business applications by implementing a many-to-one and one-to-many (common model integration) method of managing interfaces. • Rationalizing the configuration, management and execution of integrations into a consistent "assembly line" process, (regardless of the data formats or connectivity protocols involved) thereby reducing the number of tools and tech- nologies IT staff must master and maintain. • Facilitating connectivity between systems and the aggrega- tion and synthesis of data so that it can be standardized and readily consumed. • Enabling the implementation of newer industry XML stan- dards such as HL7 3.x , CCDA, CCD and FHIR immedately, while still supporting the older standards such as HL7 2.x, ANSI X12, CSV, XLS as well as the proprietary formats of internal and external applications and services. Call us at 860 632-9900 x 309 for a Demo. See what PilotFish can do for you! PILOTFISH HEALTHCARE INTEGRATION ENGINE SOLUTIONS
Transcript
The Healthcare Ecosystem - A Challenging Enviroment for Integration
The Healthcare industry is made up of a very diverse mix ofsystems – both legacy and new. Organizations have had to con-tend with a multitude of operating systems, databases, dataformats and communication protocols that have accumulatedwithin the healthcare ecosystem over the years. Much of the integration within healthcare involves data produced or consumed by EHR systems. From cloud solutions with modernAPIs, to traditional HL7-based systems, to more closed customsystems, there are hundreds of EHRs active today, each posingtheir own challenges.
Legacy and New Systems Have to Coexist
In most cases, upgrading or replacing legacy systems to support new standards or technology simply isn’t cost effectiveor feasible. The reality is that organizations must be able towork around these constraints, supporting both the old and thenew. Middleware that sits alongside these systems allows youto develop, innovate, and connect on the technology that is cur-rently in place. Middleware is what facilitates making these disparate, non-interoperable systems interoperable.
Middleware Connects Non-Interoperable Systems
The PilotFish eiPlatform integration engine is that middleware.It enables an organization to “loosely couple” all of it’s systems, connecting offerings from various vendors and of different ages and technologies. The result is flexibility andadaptability that is impossible to achieve by hard-coding integrations directly into each application.
PilotFish eiPlatform - Connect Anything With Anything
PilotFish middleware is being leveraged throughout the health-care ecosystem – by payers, providers, equipment vendors,cloud services, exchanges and other entities who need to deliver “interop-capable” solutions. Using a simple, graphicalinterface “assembly line”, implementers connect anything toanything – including legacy and new technology that may havebeen developed using different data models, designs or archi-tecture. The eiPlatform is compatible with all major databases,operating systems, data formats and communication protocols.Additional benefits to be realized include:
• Dramatically lowering the total number of interfaces requiredbetween internal and external business applications by implementing a many-to-one and one-to-many (common model integration) method of managing interfaces.
• Rationalizing the configuration, management and execution of integrations into a consistent "assembly line" process, (regardless of the data formats or connectivity protocols involved) thereby reducing the number of tools and tech-nologies IT staff must master and maintain.
• Facilitating connectivity between systems and the aggrega-tion and synthesis of data so that it can be standardized and readily consumed.
• Enabling the implementation of newer industry XML stan-dards such as HL7 3.x , CCDA, CCD and FHIR immedately, while still supporting the older standards such as HL7 2.x, ANSI X12, CSV, XLS as well as the proprietaryformats of internal and external applications and services.
Call us at 860 632-9900 x 309 for a Demo. See what PilotFish can do for you!
P I L O T F I S H H E A L T H C A R E I N T E G R A T I O N E N G I N E S O L U T I O N S
PilotFish - Facilitating Integration inVirtually Ever Area of Healthcare
The healthcare industry is made up of a web ofcomplex integration scenarios.
PilotFish meets the needs of solution providers,medical equipment and device manufacturers,medical labs, HIEs and others with an architec-ture that is both extensible using open source components and flexible to keep up with anevolving technology landscape and ever chang-ing requirements:
PilotFish meets these needs by utilizing:
• A common model method of integration which compensates for systems not being natively interoperable by converting all data into a common XML standard. Once in common format, it can be easily converted into the targets required format.
• Custom components that can seamlessly handle the differences in data formats, varying versions of standards and incom-patibilities caused by customization or extension of standards.
• Format readers that can instantly read in andconvert old and new formats – flat files, EDI, XLS, CSV, HL7, FHIR etc. into an XML representation that is readily mapped to the format required by a target system.
• Built-in adaptors that handle virtually any kind of connectivity requirement.
• An extensive library of Processors that provide a variety of quick-to-configure data manipulations, included compression, encryptions, validation and unstructured data handling.
• An open, extensible architecture that allows implementers to leverage a simple API to add modules to the base product on-the-fly using Java or .NET classes.
• A flexible deployment model with an engine that can be deployed in a lightweight container alongside a device, on single server, in a cluster, federated or in the cloud.
SOLUTION PROVIDER – Message delivery is critical when impacting patients and servingthousands of meals daily in acute care settings across the USA. PilotFish provides real-timeintegration with HL7-based EMRs and admissions, discharges, transfers and order changesfor a leading food services provider with cloud-based food and nutrition management system.
MEDICAL LAB – Medical lab with integrations with LIS systems implemented PilotFish as thecentral enterprise service bus and data transformation framework to simplify its integration architecture. PilotFish supports the diverse data formats requirements of client customerswhich include other labs, hospital EMRs, providers, Government agencies and payers.
EQUIPMENT PROVIDER – Medical equipment provider for a geographically disparate set ofHealthcare providers leverages PilotFish to support integration with all of their products, in anyprovider environment or part of the world. PilotFish is lightweight enough for deploymentalongside any piece of equipment and flexible enough to handle a wide range of data formatsincluding any flavor of HL7, IHE profiles, DICOM, XML, relational databases and anything elsethat their implementation teams may encounter.
STATE GOVERNMENT – State Government leveraged PilotFish to set up a Federated Modelfor inter- and intra-agency integration. Pockets of rapid implementation have taken root without introducing the governance and change control overhead that a more bureaucratic,centralized approach would carry. Maintainability has been dramatically increased – PilotFish-trained IT staff can readily support interfaces built by anyone, in any agency.
PilotFish - A Future-Proof Solution That Grows With You and the Industry
PilotFish has been architected to provide theflexibility, extensibility and compatibilty yourorganization needs to keep up with a changinghealthcare technology landscape:
• Flexible so you can expose both modern (e.g., web service) and legacy (e.g., file based) endpoints.
• Extensible in that all of the components that comprise the eiPlatform framework and deployed interfaces are written in Java and are easily configurable and extensible through open APIs.
• Compatible because PilotFish supports all ofthe popular application servers, operating systems and platforms, so it is certain to work within your IT infrastructure and may help reduce associated licensing costs.
W3C Standard TechnologyNatively Interoperable
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) wascreated in October 1994 to lead the Internet toits full potential by developing common proto-cols that promote its evolution and ensureinteroperability. PilotFish is based on W3Cstandards technology, so you can be assured ofan open and widely supported technology stack that will not be sunsetted or displaced.W3C standards technology is critical for implementing an interoperability framework as it facilitates the:
• Exchange of health information moreefficiently.
• Communication of that informationaccurately, effectively, and consistently.
• Improvement of the delivery of healthcarevia interoperability.
W3C standards technology also allows you tobenefit from a vast library of web resources andthe ability to draw from a large pool of highlyskilled developers worldwide.
Organizations in virtually every area ofhealthcare are benefitting from PilotFish.We invite you to learn more by visiting thecase studies section on our website at:www.healthcare.pilotfishtechnology.com
REPORTING & ANALYTICS – Data analytics firm leverages PilotFish for its architectural flexi-bility to adapt to the diverse data flavors and format requirements of its healthcare providermembers. To support this, PilotFish offers a combination of out-of-the-box parsers, finelytuned custom components and the ability to work with any data format.
REVENUE CYCLE SOLUTIONS – Clinical laboratory billing and collection company leveragedPilotFish to initiate automation. By using PilotFish and decoupling interface logic from their-core application, the client's conversion between claims processing systems became seam-less. They configured interfaces to process binary image attachments that are embeddedwithin HL7 messages as Base 64-encoded strings, eliminating the previous very manual effort.
HIE – Healthcare Claims Clearinghouse and HIE utilized PilotFish to re-engineer and transitionits claims processing architecture. PilotFish was used to create a framework capable of han-dling the connectivity, data manipulation and data validation required to effectively replace and enhance their legacy implementation. The effort included the implementation of severalhundred unique data flows providing a secure gateway for the electronic exchange of data.
POPULATION HEALTH – PilotFish and Population Health enabling technologies helped aCommunity Health Organization to harness population health data from multiple sources toachieve the linked goals of value-based care: improving quality, lowering population healthcosts and improving patients’ experience of care. The ability to work with data of all types –clinical, financial, administrative and claims – is a key benefit of PilotFish and it is fast becom-ing one of the highest priorities for efficient and scalable Population Heath efforts.
SUPPORTED PLATFORMSWindowsLinux / Unix / AIX / HP-UXMac OSXSUPPORTED APPLICATION SERVERS Windows Service Apache TomcatJBoss / WildFlyWebSphere Application Server (WAS)GlassfishWebLogicAny Other Java ContainerSUPPORTED DATABASESAny JDBC DB
(MS SQL Server / Oracle / DB2 / Postgresql / MySQL / MariaDB / Java DB / Derby / H2)
HL7 FEATURESHL7 Differencing Engine (Mediate Differences Between
HL7 Message Versions)HL7 Friendly Name OptionHL7 Lenient ParserAbility to Read Any Version of HL7Inline HL7 DocumentationTransaction Templates for HL7, FHIR and CDAEDI X12 FEATURESParse any EDI X12 TransactionEDI Friendly Name OptionSNIP Validation (Types 1-3)Inline Code Set DefinitionsTransaction Templates for EDIDATA TRANSFORMATIONSGraphical, Drag & Drop Data MappingNo Coding or Custom Scripting RequiredStandards Compliant (W3C XSLT)Computationally CompleteWORKFLOW PATTERNS SUPPORTSequencingSplitting / MergingProcess OrchestrationBranchingConditional LogicIterationERROR HANDLINGEasy, Hook-Based Customized Error HandlingConfigurable Text-Based LoggingFlexible Proactive Notifications Extensive Operational Visibility FrameworkVALIDATIONSchema (XSD)Structural Format Conformance (HL7, EDI, etc.)Business RulesExternal LookupsTESTINGInstant (No Compilation or Deployment)Graphical, Step-By-Step DebuggingEnd-to-End or Stage-by-StageIDE-Resident Server EmulationANALYTICSRobust Real-Time REST APIFlexible ReportingOn-the-Fly Break-FixeiDashboard Multi-Instance MonitoringSplunk IntegrationDEPLOYMENT MODELSOn-PremisesAWS / GCE / AzureLightweight / BundledDocker / ContainerizationLICENSING MODELSEnd-User LicensesProduct Bundling LicensesReseller Licenses(Licenses include an unlimited number of dev, test and cold back up)
P I L O T F I S H P R O D U C T S P E C I F I C A T I O N S
